The Fourth Duma Election Campaign and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Social-Democrats

Published:Sotsial-DemokratNo. 26, May 8 (April 25), 1912.

      Published according to the text inSotsial-Demokrat.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages17-21.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thepolitical strikes and the first demonstrations over the
Lena

shootings[2]show that the revolutionary movement among the masses of
workers in Russia is growing. This thickening of the revolutionary
atmosphere casts a vivid light on the tasks of the Party and its role in
the election campaign.

Thecrisis is growing in a new situation. The reactionary

Duma,[3]which provides the landlords with power, the bourgeoisie with an
arena for making deals, and the proletariat with a small platform, is a
necessary factor in this situation. We need this platform, we need the
election campaign,forour revolutionary work among the masses. We
need the illegal Party todirectall this work as a whole—in the
Taurida Palace, as well as in Kazanskaya

Square,[4]at workers’ mass meetings, during strikes, at district
meetings of worker Social-Democrats, and at open trade union meetings. Only
the hopelessly blind can fail even now to see the utter absurdity and
perniciousness for the working class of otzovism and

liquidationism,[5]those products of decay and disintegration during the
period of the triumph of counter-revolution. The example of the Narodniks
has shown us clearly the scandalouszeroone gets as the result of
adding theliquidationismof the “Trudoviks”, as well as of the
legally functioning writers ofRusskoye

Bogatstvo[6]andSovremennik,[7]to theotzovismof the
Socialist-Revolutionary “party”.

Letus now sum up the facts brought to light during the pre-election
mobilisation of political forces.Threecampsstand out clearly:

(1) TheRights—from Purishkevich to Guchkov—are
pro-government. The

Black-Hundred[8]landlord and the conservative merchant are heart and
soul for the government.

(2) Theliberalbourgeois—the “Progressists” and the Cadets,
along with groups of various non-Russians—are against the governmentand againstthe revolution. The counter-revolutionary nature of
the liberals is one of the main features of the present historical
juncture. Whoever does not see this counter-revolutionary nature of the
“cultured” bourgeoisie has forgotten everything and learned nothing, and
takes the name of democrat, to say nothing of socialist, in vain. As it
happens, the Trudoviks and “our” liquidators see poorly, and understand
things poorly!

(3) The democratic camp, in which only the revolutionary Social-Democrats,
the anti-liquidationists, united and organised, have firmly and dearly
unfurledtheir ownbanner, the banner of revolution. The Trudoviks
and our liquidators are vacillatingbetweenthe liberals and the
democrats, between legal opposition and revolution.

Theclass roots which brought about the division between the first two
camps are clear. But the liberals have succeeded in leading astray many
people, from Vodovozov to Dan, as to the class roots which divided the
second camp from the third. The liberal “strategy”, naively blurted out
by Blank inZaprosy

Zhizni,[9]is very simple: the Cadets are the centre of the
opposition, the thill-horse; the outrunners (the “flanks”) are the
Progressists on the right, and the Trudoviks and the liquidators on the
left. It is on this “troika” that the Milyukovs, in their role of
“responsible opposition”, hope to “ride” to triumph.

Thehegemony of the liberals in the Russian emancipation movement hasalwaysmeant, and will always mean, defeat for this movement. The
liberals manoeuvre between the monarchy of the Purishkeviches and the
revolution of the workers and peasants, betraying the latter ateveryserious juncture. The task of the revolution is tousethe liberals’ fight against the government and toneutralisetheir vacillations and treachery.

Thepolicy of the liberals is to scare Purishkevich and Romanov a
little with the prospect of revolution, in order to share power with them
and jointly suppress the revolution.And it is the class position of the bourgeoisie that deter mines this
policy. Hence the Cadets’ cheap “democracy” and theiractualfusion with the most moderate “Progressists” of the type of Yefremov,
Lvov, Ryabushinsky and Co.

Thetactics of the proletarian Party should be to use the fight between
the liberals and the Purishkeviches over the division of power—withoutin any wayallowing “faith” in the liberals to take hold among
the people—in order to develop, intensify and reinforce the revolutionary
onslaught of the masses, which overthrows the monarchy and entirely wipes
out the Purishkeviches and Romanovs. At the elections, its tactics should
be to unite the democratsagainstthe Rightsand againstthe Cadets by “using” the liberals’ fight against the Rights in cases of
a second ballot, in the press and at meetings. Hence the necessity for a
revolutionary platform that even now goes beyond the bounds of
“legality”. Hence the slogan of a republic—as against the liberals’
“constitutional” slogans, slogans of a “Rasputin-Treshchenkov

constitution”.[10]Our task is to train an army of champions of the
revolution everywhere, always, in all forms of work, in every field of
activity, at every turn of events which may be forced on us by a victory of
reaction, the treachery of the liberals, the protraction of the crisis,
etc.

Lookat the Trudoviks. They are Narodnik liquidatorssans
phrases. “We are revolutionaries,” Mr. Vodovozov “hints”,
“but—wecan’t go against

Article 129,[11]” he adds. A hundred years after Herzen’s birth, the
“party” of the peasant millions is unable to publish even a sheet—even
a hectographed one!—in defiance of Article 129!! While gravitating
towards a bloc “first of all” with the Social-Democrats, the Trudoviks
are unable to say clearly that the Cadets are counter-revolutionary, to lay
the foundations for arepublicanpeasant party. Yet that is
exactly how the question stands after the lessons of 1905–07 and 1908–11:
either fight for a republic, or lick the boots of Purishkevich and grovel
under the whips of Markov and Romanov. There is no other choice for the
peasants.

Lookat the liquidators. No matter how much the Martynovs, Martovs and
Co. shift and shuffle, any conscientious and sensible reader will recognise
that

R—kov[12]summed uptheirviews when he said: “Let there be no illusion. What is in
the making is the triumph of a very moderate bourgeois progressism.”  Theobjectivemeaning of this winged phrase is the following:
revolution is an illusion, the real thing is to support the
“Progressists”. Surely anyone who does not deliberately close his eyes
must see now that it isprecisely thisthat the Dans and Martovs
are saying, in slightly different words, when they issue the slogan:
“Wrest the Duma [the Fourth Duma, a landlord-ridden

				Duma!][1]from the hands of the reactionaries”? Or when they make, again and again,
the slip of referring to two camps? Or when they shout, “Do not
frustrate” the progressive work of the liberal bourgeois? Or when they
fight against a “Left bloc”? Or when, writing inZhivoye

Dyelo,[13]they smugly snap their fingers at “the literature
published abroad which nobody reads”? Or when theyactuallycontent themselves with a legal platform and legal attempts at
organisation? Or when they form “initiating

groups”[14]of liquidators, thus breaking with the revolutionary
R.S.D.L.P.? Is it not clear that this is also the tune sung by the
Levitskys, who are lending philosophical depth to the liberal ideas about
the struggle for right, by the Nevedomskys, who have lately “revised”

Dobrolyubov’s[15]ideas backwards—fromdemocracytoliberalism—and by the Smirnovs, who are making eyes at “progressism”,
and by all the other knights ofNasha

Zarya[16]andZhivoye Dyelo?

Actuallythe democrats and the Social-Democrats, even if they had
wanted to, would never have been able to “frustrate” a victory of the
“Progressists” among the landlords and bourgeois! All this is nothing but
idle talk. This is not where the serious differences lie. Nor is this what
constitutes the distinction between aliberaland aSocial-Democraticlabour policy. To “support” the Progressists
on the ground that their “victories” “bring the cultured bourgeois
nearer to power” is a liberal labour policy.

WeSocial-Democrats regard a “victory” of the Progressists as anindirectexpression of a democratic upswing. It is necessary to
use the skirmishes between the Progressists andthe Rights—the mere slogan of support for the Progressists is no
good. Our job is to promote the democratic upswing, to foster the new
revolutionary democracy that is growing in a new way in the new
Russia. Unless it succeeds in gathering strength and winning in spite of
the liberals,no“triumph” of the Progressists and the Cadets in
the elections will bring about any serious change in the actual situation
in Russia.

Thedemocratic upswing is an indisputable fact now. It is progressing
with greater difficulty, at a slower pace and along a more arduous path
than we should like, but it is progressing nonetheless. It isthisthat we must “support” and promote by our election work and every other
kind of activity. Our task is to organise the revolutionary democrats—by
ruthless criticism of Narodnik liquidationism and Narodnik otzovism to
forge a republican peasant party—but first of all and above all else to
clean “our own house” of liquidationism and otzovism, intensify our
revolutionary Social-Democratic work among the proletariat and strength en
the illegal Social-Democratic Labour Party. The out come of the growing
revolutionary crisis does not depend on us; it depends on a thousand
different causes, on the revolution in Asia and on socialism in Europe. But
it does depend on us to conduct consistent and steady work among the masses
in the spirit of Marxism, and only this kind of work isneverdone
in vain.

[1]Interpolationsin square brackets (within passages quoted by Lenin)
have been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.—Ed.

[2]Thisrefers to the shooting of unarmed workers in the Lena gold-fields,
Siberia, on April 4 (17), 1912.

Thegold-fields were owned by British Capitalists, and their partners were
Russian capitalists, members of the tsar’s family, and tsarist
dignitaries. The owners made a profit of about 7,000,000 rubles annual
y. The gold-fields being situated in a region of taiga forests, almost
2,000 kilometres from the Siberian Railway, the Capitalists and their
helpers committed the worst excesses: they paid the workers niggardly wages
for their back-breaking toil, supplied them with rotten food, and outraged
the workers’ wives and children. Unable to bear the oppression and outrages
any longer, the workers went on strike early in March 1912. The strike was
led by the Bolshevik group formed in the gold-fields in the autumn of
1911. On March 4 (17), 1912, a central strike committee was elected with
the Bolsheviks occupying a leading position on it. The demands to be
presented to the management included: an eight-hour working day, a 10 to 30
per cent wage increase, abolition of fines, organisation of medical aid,
improvement of food and living quarters, etc. The Board of Lenzoto (Lena
Gold-Mining Company) rejected these demands and decided to dismiss the
strikers, stop supplying them with food on credit and evict them from the
gold-fields barracks, which meant dooming the workers and their families to
death by starvation The workers did not allow the police to carry out the
evictions. The strikers held their ground andrisistedall attempts at provocation and
intimidation. The strike was peaceful and organised.

Atthe instance of influential British and Russian shareholders of the
company, the tsarist authorities decided to use arms against the strikers
in order to intimidate workers in Russia. During the night of April 3-4
(16-17) some of the members of the Central Strike Committee were
arrested. In reply, on April 4 (17) about 3,000 workers marched to the
Nadezhda Mine to lodge a complaint against the unlawful actions of the
authorities and hand the Procurator a petition for the release of those
arrested. Captain Treshchenkov of the gendarmerie ordered his men to open
fire, with the result that 270 workers were killed and 250 injured.

Thenews of the bloody drama on the Lena aroused the furious indignation of
the workers throughout Russia. Protest demonstrations, meetings and strikes
took place all over the country. The Social-Democratic Duma group
interpellated the government onthe Lena shootings. The insolent reply of the tsar’s Minister
Makarov—“So it was and so it will be!”—added to the workers’
indignation. Strikes protesting against the Lena shootings involved about
300,000 workers. They merged with the May Day strikes in which about
400,000 workers took part. “The Lena shootings,” Lenin pointed out, “led
to the revolutionary temper of the masses developing into a revolutionary
upswing of the masses.”

[3]TheDumawas a representative assembly which the tsarist
government was forced to convene as a result of the revolutionary events of
1905. Nominally it was a legislative body but it had no real
authority. Elections to the Duma were neither direct, nor equal, nor
universal. In the case of the working classes, as well as of the
non-Russian nationalities of the country, the suffrage was greatly
curtailed, a considerable section of the workers and peasants lacking any
voting rights. Under the electoral law of December 11 (24), 1905, one
landlord vote was made equivalent to three votes cast by representatives of
the urban bourgeoisie, 15 peasant votes and 45 votes cast by workers.

TheFirst and Second Dumas (April–July 1906 and February–June 1907,
respectively) were dissolved by the tsarist government. On June 3, 1907,
the government carried out a coup d’état and issued a new electoral
law which still further curtailed the rights of the workers, peasants and
urban petty bourgeoisie and guaranteed the complete supremacy of the
reactionary bloc of the land lords and big capitalists in the Third and
Fourth Dumas (1907-12 and 1912-17).

[4]TheTaurida(Tavrichesky)Palacewas the building in
which the Duma held its sessions from 1906 to 1917.

KazanskayaSquare—in front of the Kazan Cathedral in
St. Petersburg—was the scene of frequent revolutionary demonstrations.

[5]Seepp. 151–52 of this volume.

[6]RusskoyeBogatstvo(Russian Wealth)—a monthly
published in St. Petersburg from 1876 to the middle of 1918. In the early
1890s it became a liberal Narodnik organ. In 1906 it virtually became the
mouthpiece of the semi-Cadet Popular Socialist Party.

[7]Sovremennik(The Contemporary)—a literary and
political monthly published in St. Petersburg from 1911 to 1915, around
which ware grouped Menshevik liquidators, Socialist-Revolutionaries,
Popular Socialists and Left liberals. It had no links with the masses of
the workers. In 1914 Lenin described its trend as a hybrid of Narodism and
Marxism.

[8]BlackHundreds—monarchist bands which the tsarist police
formed to combat the revolutionary movement. They murdered revolutionaries,attacked progressive intellectuals and organised anti-Jewish pogroms.

[9]ZaprosyZhizni(Demands of Life)—a weekly published
in St. Petersburg from 1909 to 1912. Contributors to it were Cadets,
Popular Socialists and Menshevik liquidators. Lenin called it a
“liquidationist-Trudovik-Vekhi” periodical.

[10]Rasputin,G. Y.(1872-1916)—an adventurer who enjoyed great
influence at the Court of Nicholas II. “Rasputinism” most strikingly
expressed the obscurantism, fanaticism and moral decay typical of the
ruling upper stratum of tsarist Russia.

Treshchenkov,N. V.(1875-1915)—Captain of Gendarmerie, one
of those who led the shooting of the Lena gold-miners in April 1912.

[11]Thisrefers to Article 129 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Empire,
which envisaged severe punishment, including penal servitude, for public
actions and dissemination of writings against the tsarist system.

[12]R–kov, N. A. Rozhkov—historian, Social-Democrat, one of the
Menshevik liquidators.

[13]ZhivoyeDyelo(Vital Cause)—a legal daily newspaper
published by the Menshevik liquidators in St. Petersburg in 1912. Sixteen
issues appeared.

[14]Leninis referring to the “initiating groups of Social-Democratic
functionaries of the open working-class movement” which the Menshevik
liquidators formed from the end of 1910 onwards as a counter to the illegal
Party organisations. The liquidators regarded those groups as nuclei of the
new, broad legal party they were advocating a party within the framework of
the June Third, Stolypin regime. They succeeded in forming “initiating
groups” in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinoslav and Konstantinovka
(Donets coal-field) in the shape of small groups of intellectuals
dissociated from the working class. These groups opposed the strike
movement and revolutionary demonstrations of the workers, and fought
against the Bolsheviks in the Fourth Duma elections. The guiding centres of
the “initiating groups” wereGolos Sotsial-Demokrata, which the
liquidators published abroad, andNasha ZaryaandDyelo
Zhizni, legal liquidationist organs published in Russia.

[15]Dobrolyubov,N. A.(1836-1861)—outstanding Russian
revolutionary democrat, literary critic and materialist philosopher, one of
the forerunners of Russian Social-Democracy.

[16]NashaZarya(Our Dawn)—a legal monthly published by
the Menshevik liquidators in St. Petersburg from 1910 to 1914. It was the
centre for the liquidationist movement in Russia.